


Ignited

by grayimperia



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: Maki's fingers dig into her tights and the scars that lie beneath them as she wills herself to feel like she can’t hear Momota calling her name through the door. Be inanimate, be a knife or a gun or anything that exists just to kill. Be what you are.She knows what it’s like to be impulsive, but she wonders what it’s like to feel.-Maki finds her humanity.





	1. Spark

Maki pushes open the red door. The weapons lining the walls remain impassive to her presence, seemingly uninterested in their own grand reveal. Guns and knives and weapons simply are. She is left completely alone to feel the dread. 

Her arms above her pretty red sleeves and her legs below her pretty red tights are lined with ugly red scars. Behind the pretty red doors her lie unravels around her. She is strong. She isn't stronger than suspicion or evidence or Monokuma's vote. But she is strong enough to stop the approaching footsteps from undoing her completely. 

Saihara pulls back from the door like he was burned—the sheer red of the paneling turned flame—when Maki slips through the slightest opening she can. He doesn't stammer or stare at the ground quite as much as before, but he still skitters away at little more than a glare. 

Maki watches him with crossed arms, and though it protects her secret, she can't help but think it's rather pathetic that a threat scares a detective's suspicions away. She can't help but think it's rather pathetic when the detective ends up with his bangs plastered to his forehead by the red water leaking out of the smashed tank pooling onto they gym floor. 

But before then, Maki stays away. Maki gets a video. Maki hears a knock on her door and a deep voice asking for entry. With her knees pressed to her chest, she sits against her door made of fire and pretends she doesn't hear anything—that she's just another inanimate object in her room full of weapons—until her visitor vanishes like he never existed. 

-

Saihara’s corpse’s skin is somehow even paler than he was in life. The slight bit of blood matted in his hair shines bright red against his ghostly complexion. The effect is somewhat dulled by the pale red water soaking the floor around him, and further still by the others running around in a panic, screaming the obvious. 

There’s been another murder, the detective is dead, we’re all going to die.

Maki didn’t know Saihara well. He was close to Akamatsu. Akamatsu was there and led them and then she was gone. Maki retreats from the crime scene as soon as she’s able, thinking dully that the same thing has happened to him.

But it’s none of her business, and she returns to guarding her room. It’s an unfortunately short time before the tall girl—Tojo, Maki barely remembers—comes to ask her for an alibi. Maki looks up at her. Her tone is demanding, but it lacks the desperation that would come from someone fighting for their life. 

Tojo says, “Harukawa-san, it is necessary you cooperate, or we will be forced to suspect you during the trial. Your alibi, please.”

“You know I don’t have one,” Maki says plainly. 

Tojo nods, folding her hands in front of her. “That is unfortunate.”

Maki would ask if she suspects her, but part of her seems to instinctually know that’s not the case. Tojo is stone faced in her question, but not quite in the way a skilled investigator would be. 

Maki hears steps and sees the loud boy, the one who invited her to the strategy meeting where Amami died—Momota—approaching. He seems agitated. His sleeves are dripping and the knees of his rolled up pants are soaked through to the skin.

She glances between him and Tojo. She could tell him her own thoughts, but that would cast too much suspicion onto herself. When he approaches, Maki says, “I already told Tojo I don’t have an alibi.”

“Oh, huh?” he says. “You don’t? Oh that’s… that’s too bad.”

His words seem hollow, and Tojo says, “Momota-kun, are you sure you are able to—”

“Yeah,” Momota presses his fists together. “‘Course I am. I just need to ask Harukawa a few questions, and then I’m done.”

“I see,” Tojo says. “Would you allow me to observe as well? Perhaps you can get more information than I was able to.”

Maki narrows her eyes at the sudden interrogation. Momota either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about her hostile air. She looks over his face, something slightly sad and tired about his expression jumping out to her. He must have been friends with Saihara, the corpse. “Harukawa,” he says. “Did you do it?”

Maki frowns. “No.”

“Alright,” Momota says. 

Tojo doesn’t drop her calm composure even as her bewilderment shows in the sudden jerk of her head to stare at Momota. “Is that… your only question?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I asked her, and I believe her.”

This isn’t how interrogations go, Maki’s brain supplies. 

“Momota-kun, there’s been a murder,” Tojo tries to reason. “Saihara-kun was the most capable member of our group at solving mysteries. We cannot afford to slack off now that—”

“You think I’m slacking off?” he growls. “I asked her a damn question, and I believed her answer. How the hell is that slacking off?”

“You can’t simply ask each of us individually if we’re the culprit,” Tojo says. “Everyone will say no.”

Momota always seemed hot headed, but something about his anger appears more real to Maki. She asks, “Tojo, are you the culprit?”

Tojo glances down at her like she’s a particularly unappealing mess. “No,” she says. “No, I am not. Momota-kun,” she turns to him, something vindictive rearing its head just above the controlled tone of her voice. “Are you the culprit?”

“What kind of a sick joke is that?” he snarls. 

“Do you have an alibi for last night or the day before?” she asks.

“What the hell does that matter?” Momota says. “There’s no fucking way I’d hurt Shuichi.”

Maki raises an eyebrow at the name, but says nothing. Tojo says, “So you don’t have an alibi then, do you?”

“No one cares about that,” he says. “I didn’t do it. Harukawa didn’t do it—”

“And I am innocent as well,” Tojo says. “Which I suppose means we’re done here.”

Tojo walks away with soft clicks of her heels, Momota glaring after her. Maki says, “Why do you think that?”

Momota looks at her as if he had almost forgotten she was there. “Think what? That you’re innocent?”

“Yes,” Maki says. “Do you have proof that somehow I don’t?”

“No?” he says, more confused than anything else. “Why would I need proof? I just think you’re innocent because I do.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” Maki says. “Or, if it is, then you’re a complete idiot.”

Momota scowls. “I just believe in you, that’s all. And I’m not an idiot.”

He says it so simply before stomping away with the sounds of the Monokuma telling them it’s time to start the trial without another word.

Momota must have stepped in the water. His slippers paint faded red footprints back the way he came. Maki hadn’t stayed long, but she can picture in her mind’s eye him running forward to the corpse. Tojo did no such thing.

She and the loud boy don’t have alibis and Tojo seems on a mission to find one of them guilty. The detective is dead, and Maki knows exactly what she needs to do to stay alive at the trial. 

Maki avoids the bloody trail towards the class trial on her own way. Momota had decided she was innocent on nothing more than her word. He seems more irritated still at the trial landing, arguing with the other loud boy, the one who cried and screamed and laughed at random during the last trial. 

He doesn’t acknowledge her presence again until they reach their podiums. She’s not special, but she is innocent. 

-

The small girl is under suspicion for a while, and the two loud girls argue over her innocence while another even louder girl throws out an almost impressively creative variety of vulgar remarks. Maki stays quiet, her most prominent thought as her classmates fire back and forth at each other is that she should really learn their names at some point. 

The loud girl who claims she can fight says what Momota had. She believes because she believes. It’s as simple as that. 

The other loud girl, the bright one, she says, “but what if she’s culprit?” she pushes, “Tenko, if you believe in Himiko and she’s guilty, then we all die. Are you okay with that?”

“She just said she was,” Momota snaps. “Chabashira said she believes in her, no matter what and you have to respect that.”

“Tenko doesn’t need a man to speak for her,” the girl—Chabashira—hisses. “But it is true. Tenko believes in Yumeno-san, and nothing will change that.”

“Oi,” says the vulgar girl. “When you two meatheads are done sucking each other off, can we get some damn proof in here?”

“Iruma-chan,” a sweet voice says. “Can you shut your filthy mouth and keep your disgusting garbage to yourself? The adults are talking.”

Maki distantly hears sniveling as she thinks the boy before her very much does not look like an adult. But he moves the case forward. With the detective dead and a suspect not intent on ratting themselves out, the group flounders at what Maki thinks seems like even basic puzzle solving. 

Of course, she keeps her mouth shut even when she thinks she knows an answer. Knowing too much and being too smart would paint a target she doesn’t need on her back, and she’s fine with letting this tiny, yappy boy set himself up to be the next victim. He’ll save them now, and then he’ll die, and Maki thinks she’s fine with that. 

He’ll be useful and then he’ll be gone. That’s how tools work. That’s how people work. 

Then, Tojo says, “The murder had to have occurred at night, meaning none of us have alibis, but I believe we can narrow it down to a reasonable list of suspects.”

“Oh?” the short boy says. “Does Tojo-chan have something in mind? I knew I could count on you to help out, mom!”

“I told you not to call me that,” she says. “And yes. In my opinion, the most likely suspects are Momota-kun, who Saihara-kun was used to meeting at night, and thus would not think twice over being called out, and—”

“Like hell that’s true!” Momota snaps. “I already told you, I’m not the fucking culprit.”

Tojo observes him through one cold eye. “And I’m afraid I already told you that your word is not sufficient evidence. And my other suspect,” she turns her one eye on Maki, “is the person who was out of their room all night but did not report seeing anything unusual. Harukawa-san also already admitted to not having an alibi.”

“Oh, Angie gets it!” says the bright girl. “So it has to be Maki or Kaito, right? Kirumi figured it out! Atua thanks you for all your hard work, too!”

“That is high praise,” Tojo says. “But please think nothing of it. I am merely doing my part, like anyone else in my position would.”

“Hmm,” the short boy says. “Interesting. Thank you, Tojo-chan! You can shut up now. Sooo,” he turns his gaze on Maki. “What do our main suspects think? If you know it’s not you, then it has to be the other person, right? So let’s hear your arguments! Corner your opponent and give them the ol’ one two!”

He punches the air to demonstrate his point, and Maki can only look at the others, following his lead. This tiny boy solved enough of their mysteries that everyone seems to hang on his every word. They’ve turned off their brains—they’re like sheep. Maki’s eyes dart to Momota, ready for him to fall in line and against her.

He pauses, presses his fists together, and opens his mouth. “Like hell that’s gonna happen,” Momota says. “‘Cause I’m telling you me and Harukawa are both innocent. And I know I’m right because I believe in her.”

“Aww, I see how it is,” he says. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not—”

“Evidence, proof, facts,” he lists. “Man, do you really just not get it? How hard is that to understand? What matters here is logic, not your emotions or you having a good feeling about something or—”

“Do you really think that?” Momota snorts. “Man, I feel sorry for you. You must have a hard life.”

That catches the short boy off guard, and as he spits back an indignant, “What?” Maki can’t help but hang on to his next words, too. 

“Thinking it’s all about logic, and never considering how other people feel—hell, never considering how _you_ feel,” Momota shakes his head. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live that way. I couldn’t live without being able to believe in what I want to, but stopping yourself from even consider if you trust someone without doing calculations like a damn robot? Yeah, I don’t know what happened to you to make you think that way, but that sucks, man.”

The robot in question voices his disapproval of the comparison, and Maki sees the short boy stunned for half a second out of the corner of her eye. He recovers almost as quickly, waving him off with, “you’re right. We just come from different backgrounds. And in my background, we believe in facts not what’s in our hearts or the tooth fairy.”

Momota’s going to shout back at him, Maki realizes. She turns away from her podium. “I’m not going to argue with Momota. If you want to make one of us your culprit, just do it yourself.”

Momota shouts in support—shouts that he believes in her again. Everyone calls him an idiot, and Maki has to agree. It is stupid to believe in her.

At least it’s stupid until a deep voice sighs. “Harukawa’s not the culprit. Was outside her lab for like half the night—heard her moving around in there, but she never came out.”

“Hoshi-chan” the short boy says. “Why are you volunteering this information now?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t want us to get on the wrong track.”

He’s met with a tilt of the short boy’s head then a giggle. “Oh, fine, fine. Man, you guys are no fun. Okaaay, I guess we can move on. But man, I try to get you guys to think and argue for yourselves and you just fight me every step of the way. You know I’m doing this all out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Excuse me,” Tojo says. “Are you admitting to purposefully dragging this trial out for your own amusement?”

“Well yeah!” he says. “I have to do something to keep myself entertained when the culprit’s so obvious. By the way,” he presses a finger to his lips. “The culprit is Tojo-chan.”

They erupt into a chaos that only makes Maki feel vindicated. She knew she was right. She felt it, she believed, she—she looks at Momota. She looks at Momota again when he shouts at Tojo to run. Tojo dies, and Momota seems so angry at Monokuma, and Maki doesn’t get it.

Tojo killed Saihara, and Momota wanted her to live. Maki stares at Tojo’s corpse while the others tell Monokuma how horrible he is. 

Tojo was useful and now she’s gone. She was used up and thrown away. Tojo was barely a person. Maki feels something burning in her throat.

She doesn’t pay attention to the others again until she finds a reason to remember Ouma’s name. He calls her the very worst kind of liar. He calls out, “Isn’t that right, Ultimate Assassin-chan?”

Maki sees red. She’s moving towards Ouma, then her hand’s on his throat, then she’s being pulled away. Her vision clears just enough to see Momota’s face, and the roaring in her ears subsides to make him yelling her name snap her back to some reality that’s not burning to the ground.

Ouma collapses, and the others stare in horror. Momota says her name again. Maki runs. 

She goes to her room and sits against her door with her knees pressed to her chest. Her body still feels like it’s on fire with the rush of her instincts taking over. Act. Don’t think, don’t second guess, don’t hesitate when you warp your hands around someone’s throat and squeeze. Move, fight, let yourself be used. 

Some rings her doorbell over and over and over again. 

Maki wants to be alone with her rage and her self-hate and whatever other twisted regret she’s feeling at missing the chance to kill Ouma. Momota keeps ringing, his voice carrying through the door as Maki thinks he has to just be holding down the button at this point. 

She wills him to disappear, but he doesn’t. He says her name again. She hears his voice from the trial. “I feel sorry for you.”

“Harukawa, c’mon. I’m not leaving until you open up.”

“You must have had a hard life.”

Her fingers dig into her tights and the scars that lie beneath them as she wills herself to feel like she can’t hear him. Be inanimate, be a knife or a gun or anything that exists just to kill. Be what you are. 

Momota says, “You know, I’m good at the silent treatment, too. I bet I can do it even longer than you.”

He stays quiet for five minutes then calls her name again. 

Maki knows what it’s like to be impulsive, but she wonders what it’s like to feel. 

-

When Maki was a little girl, she had a friend. They would play house and bake cookies and do all the things that little girls should do. Her friend was weak and she was strong, but that didn’t matter when they braided hair or made up songs to chant at each other. 

The other kids at the orphanage flocked to her, and she and her friend helped. She didn’t like the other kids—they were loud and annoying and picked petty fights with each other that she would be inevitably dragged into to solve. Maki just liked her friend. Her friend was different and her friend said, “hey, Maki-chan, red looks really good on you, you know! It matches your eyes!”

Maki had tugged at her hair and felt herself start to blush. Her friend giggled, “and it matches your face, too.”

They had a play fight then, and Maki had won because she was strong and her friend was weak. Or maybe Maki was weak and her friend who could reach out to someone like her was strong. 

Momota rings her doorbell again in the morning and stares down at her with a smile as bright as the sun when she opens up to him. He babbles to her about how he knew she’d come around and everyone’s waiting and she needs to come, too, he’s not leaving without her.

Momota turns away to ford the path to where the others are. Maki stays behind him and feels her face turn red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working more than I thought I was this week, so I ended up getting too busy to sit down and finish the next chapter of my rewrite, but this was almost done so I figured now would be a good time to post. 
> 
> And this is the first chapter of my plans for my second multi-chapter fic! This fic is going to be entirely focused on Maki and will be less about mystery solving and more about character arcs, which I hope will still be enjoyable! There are also going to be many more important relationships and characters as things move along, and they will be tagged as they appear. I'm planning to keep chapters to roughly 3k-5k and will hopefully post updates regularly once I finish my other big fic project. Thank you for reading!


	2. Flickering

Momota was shocked, at first, when Maki confessed she didn’t exactly know everyone by name, but he seems to think it’s funny now.

Her hair is one of the few things she likes about herself, and she can’t help but tug at one of her pigtails as Momota says, “Okay, let’s try again. Iruma is really…”

He gestures for her to continue. “Annoying,” Maki answers.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “But that could be almost anyone—c’mon, what else. I know you know this one.”

Maki’s hair trails to the ground when they sit in the grass. The sun shines at them through the bars of the cage, casting ribbons of light over her ribbons of hair. It’s impractical to have hair so long when you’re an assassin. One of the men in charge of her training told her he would hold her down and cut it off himself the next time she failed a mission. Maki wonders what he’ll do when she goes back after being gone for so long.

She tugs at her hair. “I don’t know. Loud.”

“Loud and annoying—that still could be almost anyone,” Momota persists.

“It could be you.”

He laughs. “Hey now, you don’t really think that. You wouldn’t be hanging out with me if you did.”

They’ve been sitting out in the sun for a while now. Maki’s hair is warm.

Momota had invited her to breakfast that morning, and Maki had followed behind him. 

She had heard the others chattering to themselves through the door, and Momota looked back at her with an encouraging smile. All of the chatter stopped when she had entered the dining hall behind him. 

Ouma looked at her like she was something stuck on bottom of his shoe, but Iruma had been the first to speak. “You brought the fucking assassin!? What the hell, space case!”

Momota shouted back in her defense. Ouma wasn’t the only one staring at her with contempt—the others were confused or apathetic at best. But it was the superiority in his gaze that made him stand out from the others. Maki understood why. He had thought he had gotten rid of her with that little stunt he pulled after the trial—she had snapped, and he had won. 

Momota kept arguing with the others until Ouma coolly said, “Momota-chan, why don’t you actually ask little miss assassin what she wants. Because to me, it really doesn’t look like she wants to play nice with the rest of us, mmkay?” 

Maki hadn’t realized how dark her expression had grown until he spoke. Momota spun on his heel, more concerned for her wellbeing that anything. “Harukawa?”

Even before she was an assassin, Maki had never liked being the center of attention. Too much focus on her was bad for completing missions, and too big or bright a personality meant too many children flocking her at the orphanage. For some reason, it was hard to look at Momota’s comforting expression when Ouma’s evaluative eyes flicked over her. 

“If I’m not wanted, I’ll leave,” Maki had said. “It’s not like I wanted to come, either—Momota dragged me here. Just stay away from me, and I’ll stay away from you.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Ouma said.

Momota was the only one to say a word in her defense, but that wasn’t a surprise. Even from the few cursory moments she had spent in the dining hall, it had become clear to Maki that Ouma single handedly solving the trial had created an unstated deference to him. She also knew she can’t hold it against him for not enjoying her company after she attempted to choke the life out of him. 

Maki thinks she’ll hold the way he stares at her like she’s a thing against him instead.

Walking out of the dining hall with everyone’s eyes on her back had been painful in a way she hadn’t expected. She shouldn’t care what some faces who exist to stab each other and be stabbed in return think of her. 

Momota had said, “You don’t have to give her such a hard time.”

Ouma’s voice sounded softer and softer with each step away from the miserable confrontation. “And you don’t have to bring a violent killer to breakfast, but here we are.”

“Just give her a chance—she’s not dangerous.”

“Would you like to tell that to the bruises on my neck?”

“I’m sorry about that, man…”

Momota took too long to come after her, but Maki can’t fault him. That fact that he came after her at all is enough to make her tug at her hair.

In the grass away from the school, away from the others, Momota prods, “Okay, new one. Who is short and has a funny hat?”

Maki thinks these exercises are stupid. She says, “the girl with the witch hat.”

“Not who I was thinking of, but also true, sure,” Momota says. “And her name is…?”

“Yu,” Maki doesn’t know, “mana.”

“Close!” Momota says. “Yumeno. And who is short and has a funny hat _and_ is grumpy?”

Maki closes her eyes. The deep voice that had come to speak with her the night Tojo was killing Saihara. He was a murderer, too, but he was allowed to stay with the others. “Hoshi.”

Momota’s expression lights up. “Hey, good job!”

“I got one,” Maki says. “You don’t have to treat me like a little kid.”

“Huh?”

Maki looks over to see the confusion on his face of all things. “Doing one thing right isn’t a big deal. You don’t have to patronize me.” 

“I didn’t think I was,” Momota frowns. “I was just happy for you. Do you not like being told you were good at something?”

All of a sudden, Maki feels embarrassed and she tugs her hair tighter around her. Momota keeps talking. “I mean, back home I’d tell my friends stuff like that all the time—I think it’s good to be around people who encourage you, you know?”

“It just seems childish to me to get excited over something so trivial,” Maki says. 

Momota goes on to insist that it’s not trivial—that learning the names of people she isn’t going to stab a knife into for the first time in years is worthy of praise. 

-

If you use the wrong flowers, it can sting a little when you press your nail through the stem. Maki has little cuts on her hands from chores or games or just clumsy childhood life, and she stares hard at the flowers before her to make sure she picks the right kind. 

Her friend isn’t look at the flowers for right or wrong and instead rushes past her to calling, “Maki-chan, here! These ones are pretty!”

Maki crouches down next to tiny red flowers her friend points to. She narrows her red eyes. “These are too small. The stems are too thin to make a good chain.”

“But they’re pretty!” her friend says. She picks one and slips it behind her ear. “They can be earrings!”

“You don’t wear earrings like that, dummy,” Maki says. “You make a hole in your ear or something.”

Her friend isn’t listening and instead picks another from the ground. “Here’s one for you!” She holds out the tiny flower by its tiny stem, and Maki’s fingers brush against hers when she takes it. Maki stares hard at the little flower while her friend giggles. “Do you like it?”

“Did you pick it just because it was red?” Maki asks. 

“Maaaaybe,” she says. “Now hurry up and put it on!”

“You don’t always have to do stuff because you think I’ll like it,” Maki says with a huff, shoving the flower into her pocket. “We can do stuff you wanna do, too.”

“Well, I like red, too,” her friend says, sticking her tongue out. “You don’t own it, Maki-chan.”

“You’re just copying me.”

“Am not!”

The play arguing turned into play fighting and rolling around on the grass and through the patch of flowers. They both got scolded for getting dirty and bruising their knees, but neither of them cared and turned to each other with twin grins as soon as the orphanage caretaker walked away. 

Her friend seemed sad, though, when she reached up her ear to find the little flower gone. “Oh, I guess it fell out.”

Maki felt her heart lurch in sympathy as she dug her hand into her pocket to retrieve the thoroughly bent flower she had stored there. “Um,” she says. “Doesn’t have a lot of its petals left but…”

Her friend giggles when she takes it and places it behind her ear where the old one had been. “It’s great!”

It had turned to dark by the time of their exchange, but Maki felt a warmth budding in her chest even as they were ushered away from each other and towards their beds. 

Maki had felt a rush of warmth suddenly spiral through body before, but it wasn’t anger or embarrassment. Maki curled her scraped knees to her chest. 

On cold nights in a darker place, she would still hold her knees to her chest and try to remember what happy felt like.

-

Momota is smart, Maki realizes. Like really smart. Like the smartest person she’s ever met. He rambles a lot about himself, and while the embellishments he seems incapable of resisting tossing in are obvious, the sheer amount of stuff he knows things about catches Maki off guard. Because he looks like an idiot, and talks like an idiot, and Maki feels like an idiot when she thinks about how she never actually made it to high school. 

There wasn’t much time for mathematics or grammar lessons when she was busy running laps until she threw up. She isn’t even really an official ultimate. Getting recognized by the government for her work in assassinations would probably get her killed by her bosses. Maki doesn’t even know how she got lumped into the same category as the boy next to her who laughs when he says the uplifting saying he just told her sounds better in English. 

“Hey, want me to teach you how to introduce yourself in English?” Momota asks. “I don’t think anyone else here knows any, so it can be our secret language.”

“‘Secret language?’ Are you that childish?” Maki asks. Then she shifts slightly in place. “Also I think… Shinguji probably knows some.”

Momota waves a hand. “Pfft, doesn’t matter if he overhears us—no one listens to him anyway. Okay, so, to introduce yourself you gotta say…”

Momota likes to teach, too. Maybe some of it comes from a place of his own ego, but he lights up in a way that just seems like he’s too full of energy and something bright and happy to keep it all to himself. Maki remembers that Saihara had been taken in by him in only a few days time, and she has trouble not sympathizing when faced with the whole force of Momota’s natural magnetic charm. 

She tugs at her hair. No, this is different—she’s different than Saihara.

Momota says, “Oh, and in English, you go by your first name. So I’d say, ‘hi, I’m Kaito.’”

“That’s weird.” Maki frowns at the ground. “I haven’t been called by my first name since I was a kid.”

“What really?” Momota asks. “Not even by your friends?”

“I,” Maki hesitates for only a moment as she draws her knees to up to her chest. “I haven’t had friends since I was a kid.”

“Oh,” Momota says. “That sucks. But,” and he reaches out and lightly taps his fist to Maki’s shoulder. “That’s not true anymore since we’re friends now. You got that, Maki?”

Her face heats up before she can even fully process what he just said to her. “You,” she stammers. “You can’t just—”

“Why not?” he says, smiling brightly. “I just said we’re friends, didn’t I?”

Maki can barely stop herself from gaping at him as she feels her pulse thrum louder and louder. “If people hear you calling me that they’ll,” the embarrassment chokes her, “they’ll think…”

She trails off, and Momota seems genuinely confused about what point she was trying to make. He answers anyway. “Doesn’t matter what people think—if they get the wrong idea, that’s their problem, you know? We know what it means, and that’s all that matters.”

Even with the clarification, Maki still feels the blush on her face. “What… does it mean?”

He perks up at the question. “That we’re friends—more than friends even!”

Maki stares at him wide eyed. “What…”

“It’s like,” Momota’s excitement at his own proposal makes his whole face light up. “We’re partners, right? I’m the hero, and you’ll be my sidekick.”

It’s less romantic than Maki had been expecting—she doesn’t know why she was expecting something romantic—but it still makes her fiddle with her hair. “You can’t just decide something like that,” she says. “And why am I the sidekick? I’m stronger than you.”

“Yeah, well,” he says. “But I’ve got the hero image and the title and a catchphrase and everything.”

“You have a catchphrase?” Maki says. “That’s… dumb.”

“No, it’s not!” Momota says. “It’s really important if you’re gonna be a hero. You’re just jealous because you don’t have one yet, Maki. Oh, here—I’ll help you think of one.”

Maki tugs at her hair when he calls her name again. She mumbles, “I think I’d rather be a sidekick then.”

He squawks in protest and begins chattering about the importance of inspiring words and heroic poses. 

Maki doesn’t really listen, but she can’t help but watch him as he talks. It might be night, but he produces more than enough of his own light. She doesn’t know how she had seen him as an annoyance rather than a sun before. Even as Momota’s attention changes, Maki can still feel the fire in her skin, when he looks back at her with the moonlight caught in his eyes, she can’t deny something more beginning to smolder within her.

-

Momota runs off during the day. Nights are for her, but each morning he has to bustle around and bother everyone else. Maki idly supposes that it’s good that she’ll have some sense of what’s happening around the school even when she bites her cheek, staring at the threshold that she knows she can’t cross to be with the others. 

Momota is still part of the group. Maki is exiled even though he tries to insist she’s not. “Yeah, Ouma’s being a jackass about it,” he says. “But not everyone thinks that way. They just have to get to know you like I did. I mean, honestly, you could probably just walk into the dining hall now, and yeah, Ouma might throw a fit, but no one else would care.”

Maki knows that’s not true. She says, “it’s fine. I said I wouldn’t force anyone to be around me.”

“I know,” Momota says. “But—” he shakes his head. “Listen, I’ll talk to Ouma some more—he can’t be that hard to convince.”

Maki doesn’t like that answer, but Momota’s already gone. 

She honestly isn’t sure what to do with herself. She assumes the others flock together and make plans and speeches about how they absolutely won’t let Monokuma get to them this time for sure. Or maybe they entertain themselves in their labs or the game room or library or wherever else. 

But being confused over free time is new for Maki—downtime between missions was usually spent recovering from injuries or training to survive whatever she would have to endure next. She supposes that would translate to her throwing knives at the wall in her lab, but Momota had been so happy about his plan to make everyone like her and honing herself as an assassin likely would send that back a few steps. It’s still tempting, though, when she passes by the door. She could pretend the targets are Ouma’s face.

The school’s bigger now, and Momota had seemed spooked when he described what the new floor was like. Maki does think the creaking floors and dim light have an unsettling atmosphere, but one more akin to that of a theme park haunted house than a murderer’s lair. 

Maki once killed someone in a haunted house. She doesn’t think Momota would like that story.

The room that looks like a museum is interesting. The significance of the objects in the display cases and the books available to flip through is lost on Maki, though she assumes it’s lost on most people who aren’t Shinguji. Shinguji. Tall. Creepy. Probably speaks English.

She’s broken from her reverie when she hears the sliding door shift in place. Maki’s head snaps up to see the short boy, Hoshi, unsure but still proceeding forward when he meets her gaze. “Didn’t…” he begins to say. “Didn’t think you were into this kinda stuff.”

“I’m not.”

“Yonaga’s lab opened, too, if you feel like drawing,” he says with a shrug. “Think it’s just around the corner or… something.”

The comment could sound teasing, but Maki recognizes it as the words of someone struggling through small talk. “If you want to be alone, it’s fine. I was just leaving.”

“No,” Hoshi says. “I was actually looking for you.”

Maki sighs. “I’m not giving you your video. Everyone agreed not to bother with them anymore or something.”

“I know,” he says. “Just assumed you didn’t care about that.”

“I don’t,” Maki says. “But if you murder someone or get yourself killed, I don’t want to be involved.”

Hoshi shakes head. “Not planning to kill anyone. I just want to know… what’s out there.”

“And that wouldn’t make you want to kill someone to escape?” Maki says. “If you’re so starved for attention, it’s hard to believe you won’t—”

“No, it’s not like that for me,” Hoshi says. “I don’t kill anymore—I ruined my life already with that. I just… want a reason to get through this.”

Maki pauses. Then she fiddles with her bow. “That’s stupid. Either you get through it or you don’t. People who want to live die all the time.”

“Yeah,” Hoshi says. He looks at the ground. “Guess Tojo proved that.”

Maki hadn’t realized just how much she had pushed down the memory of Tojo screaming and crying that she wanted to live, that she was willing to torture herself just for a chance to keep going. She’d seen worse—she’d been the one with the saw before. Maki shrugs. “I knew it before Tojo. I think you did, too.”

Hoshi doesn’t respond. He paces the room, instead, pretending to have some interest in the objects lined up in Shinguji’s pristine display cases. “I got your video, you know,” he says finally. “Ouma stole it later, so I don’t have it anymore, but it was the one I watched.”

“And it showed the orphanage or something,” Maki says. 

“It did,” he says. “It seems like a nice place.”

Maki sighs. “I’m not going to trade with you. I already know what’s outside for me—you probably do, too.”

Hoshi closes his eyes for a moment. “Yeah, but maybe there’s someone I missed or…”

He looks to Maki for something—guidance, comfort. Maki stares blankly back. She isn’t sure what he was expecting from her. “I didn’t watch your video,” she says. “So I wouldn’t know.”

“Right,” Hoshi says to himself. “Right. Just… let me know if you change your mind.”

Maki watches him leave and thinks that there are probably more things she should ask him. Hoshi isn’t afraid to talk to her, or interested in what the others think, and he’s like her. Hoshi is miserably lonely, and he gets to be part of the group. 

He’s already gone by the time she makes the decision to go after him, but Maki doesn’t feel compelled enough to chase after him. Besides, she finds Momota on the second floor, and he’s happy to start talking about the group’s plans and how frustrating Ouma is but he’s sure he’s getting through to him, and Maki’s happy enough with his voice as a vague soundtrack that she doesn’t think about Hoshi again.

-

Maki closes the door behind her and lets herself press her back against it. The other happenings of the day don’t really matter. The fact that she’s trapped in a killing game doesn’t really matter. There’s a light warmth buzzing in her chest that she hasn’t felt in so long. Maki thinks that she hasn’t felt happy _in so long._

It’s a bubbling greed for more of that happiness that sparks the impulse to see if she can catch Momota for one more conversation before he disappears into his room for the night. 

She pulls her door open just a few inches on the off chance that someone else has wandered into the dorms. But there’s no one but Momota, and Momota isn’t heading towards his room. Maki furrows her brow as she sees his coat tails flutter out behind him as he walks back outside.

It’s less a decision and more an impulse that propels her silently after him. The fact that she feels a need for stealth at all makes her stomach twist, but Maki pushes that feeling down as she shadows Momota on his brief journey of the school grounds. He walks with purpose and stops when he comes to a figure standing under the arbor, their hands clasped idly behind their head, their pale face turned up to the moon lighting up their white clothes. 

Maki feels herself bristle involuntarily when Ouma says, “Nice night. Stars shining, moon’s full—I can see why you wanted to have a romantic rendezvous here.”

He winks at Momota who huffs in response. “Shut up. I didn’t ask to meet with you just so you could make fun of me.”

“I would hope not,” Ouma says. “In case you haven’t noticed, I really don’t need an invitation to point out how much of an idiot you are.”

“I said not to call me an idiot,” Momota says. “It hurts my feelings, okay?”

Ouma laughs. “Aw, didn’t know Momota-chan was so sensitive. But then again I guess with the romantic mood lighting, I should have figured you were a softie.”

“You’re really trying to make me regret doing this, aren’t you?” Momota says with a sigh.

“Doing what?” Ouma says. “Confessing your love?”

“No, asshole. I wanted,” Momota presses his fists together, and Maki can picture the determined expression on his face. In his brief pause, she feels a slight up tick in her heartbeat. He’s going to stand up to Ouma—tell him off for being so awful to her—put him in his place and— “I wanted to thank you. For what you did at Shuichi’s trial, I mean. I know you probably did it because your life was on the line, too, but saving all of our asses and finding Shuichi’s killer… I just think you should know you did good.”

Ouma raises an eyebrow and hesitates before responding. “Don’t worry about it,” he decides on with a flippant tone. “Like you said, it was solve Tojo-chan’s lame mystery or die, and I don’t really care if it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Momota says. “You still did it, and now everyone kinda looks up to you. They know you’re gonna get us out of here, and I think you will, too. You’re a smart guy, Ouma.”

“Well, duh,” Ouma smirks. “I mean, I enjoy groveling, don’t get me wrong, but I already know I’m—hey!”

He squawks the last part when Momota reaches forward and ruffles his hair. “And I wanted to say that I’m gonna help you out. The luminary of the stars doesn’t just sit back when people are in danger, you know!”

Ouma darts away from his grip, looking thoroughly unamused at his tousled hair. “And you’re helping me by putting your dirty hands in my hair!? Ugh, I probably have lice now—”

“Hey! I’m not dirty—”

“—and I’m gonna have to cut off all my hair because dumb Momota-chan—”

“I said not to call me dumb!”

They keep talking, but Maki has trouble hearing anything over the roar building in her ears. She still slips back to her room as silent as ever. This time when she shuts her door behind her, she sinks to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been slowly chipping away at the next chapter of my rewrite between schoolwork, and I wanted to post something I did have finished in the meantime. Writing this fic has been an experience for me in taking Maki's character to its logical conclusions, so I hope my interpretations are as interesting for you to read as they are for me to write, haha.


	3. Burn

Momota had chased Ouma in circles around the A.V. room a few days ago. One of them—Momota—had bumped into the coffee table hard enough to overturn it, drenching the floor and front of the couch in soda. Nobody bothered to clean up the spill—another reminder that Tojo is dead.

The room is now tinged with a rotten sweet smell, and Maki shrivels up her nose as she draws her feet up to her chest and away from the perpetual sticky spot on the carpet. Momota raises an eyebrow at her movements before his eyes finally land on the stain. “Huh,” he says. “Wonder when that got there.”

Maki rolls her eyes, but she can’t accuse him of having a faulty memory. He had dashed out of the room after Ouma, not even bothering to look back at the aftermath of his fall. 

Momota hates the assembled collection of movies on space and aliens that Monokuma has provided them. He rants about the fallacies in each title as he throws them over his shoulder in his efforts to find them something to watch. Maki wonders how badly shattered the disks inside have to be. They’ll probably lie in their pile forever given the state of the carpet. 

Tonight their training is in pop culture. Momota says her enemy is hers, and she doesn’t need to tell him what it is as long as she knows its identity, herself. He never pushes too hard or asks too many whys, but Maki finds it difficult to say no to him even when there’s a new tightness around her heart. 

His gait that night had been different. Years of identifying physical weakness in others and herself had told Maki immediately he was hiding some sort of pain. The thought made her feel like a predator looking for the wounded prey animal in the herd, and since the goal is to change, she pushed it aside and didn’t ask questions when Momota said no pushups that night. 

Momota pauses in his browsing, pulls a face, and soon an entire section of movies join the ones on the floor. Maki glances down and sees a badly rendered ghost adorning the cover of one. Partly obscured under it is a picture of a man carrying an axe covered in blood. Maki says, “You don’t like gore.”

Momota keeps scanning the shelves as he responds to her. “Uh, y-yeah. That’s right. Who would want to watch something as uncool as that?”

“I don’t really care about ‘cool’ or ‘uncool,’” Maki says. “But you’re right. No one should want to see things like that.”

He glances over his shoulder at her for one long moment, though remains uncharacteristically silent. When he turns back to the shelf, he moves with purpose and pulls out something with a bright yellow cover. He takes out the disk and pops it into the archaic looking player before handing Maki the D.V.D. case. 

The description on the back talks a lot about fun for the whole family and laughing out loud. Momota says, “Figured a comedy might be a nice change of pace.”

Further inspection shows that it’s not just a comedy but one for children. It looks incredibly stupid, and Maki doubts Momota gave it even more than a once over. But Maki can’t find it in herself to be mad. “I… don’t usually understand a lot of the jokes in things like this.”

“Huh?” Momota swivels towards her. “You mean like when they make an outdated reference or something?”

“No,” she says. “I just don’t really get humor.”

He laughs. “Oh, come on. That’s not true at all. You say lots of funny things.”

Maki recalls the things she had said before that made Momota laugh. “Is being mean funny?”

“Well, no,” Momota frowns. “I mean, I guess sometimes it is?” He waves a hand as the movie begins to start playing in earnest. “It’s hard to explain, but I gotta shut up now. You don’t want to ruin a movie by talking over it. Ah fuck, I should have brought popcorn, oh, and soda, too. Nothing makes a movie like—”

Momota proceeds to talk from the opening title to the closing credits. The only thing the supposed code of movie etiquette does is stop him from talking with his hands as much as usual. One arm stays stretched out across the back of the couch, and his other arm, the one close to her, sits blandly in the space between them. Maki watches the movie, and Momota, and Momota’s hand. 

She had held hands with the girl she used to know at the orphanage. They had held hands and hugged and tackled each other to the ground in play fighting they were told wasn’t proper for little girls. They had played house, and Maki remembers sliding a flower ring onto the other girl’s dirt covered hand. 

But they had been children. Momota rambles over the movie like he could be a child, bouncing excitedly in place. He looks like the men who would always arrive at the last second to marry the princess in the illustrations in the fairytale books Maki used to flip through. He looks like the plastic dolls people would donate to the orphanage that came in hard to open packages labeled “boyfriend.” Maki remembers getting frustrated with the twist and ties keeping the toy prisoner and being scolded when she would throw it to the ground. 

Momota says “—oh, and I didn’t even tell you what Ouma said at breakfast the other day. Everyone’s so weird about him, but I’m not gonna treat him like he’s special or anything, so when he started fucking talking about—”

Maki tugs at her pigtails. She doesn’t know if she feels like a child. Her chest feels tight. 

The children’s movie ends, and Momota’s hand stretches high into the air as he stands. “Have to admit,” he says. “I don’t think that was the best movie for you to get a feel for comedy. I’ll try and pick something better next time.”

Maki says, “It’s not that late. I wouldn’t mind watching another one now, and it’s not like we have anything better to do anyway.”

Momota’s mouth twists into a frown for half a second. He recovers fast, and Maki wonders if he has to recover around the others at breakfast. “Well, if you’re up for it, I’m not gonna say no,” he says. “I know the dining hall’s closed now, but maybe I could grab some soda from the warehouse.”

“You don’t have to. I’m not thirsty.”

He laughs. “Then it’ll all be for me.”

Momota is gone for a long time, and Maki makes the trip over the sticky carpet to pick a movie of her own. Momota seems happy when he comes back. He’s carrying enough soda that she can stretch her disbelief enough to accept that visiting the warehouse was the only thing he did in his time away. 

Maki doesn’t smile the way Momota does, and that saves her from having to recover from the sour expression that slips onto her face when Momota sets a bright purple soda can on the sticky coffee table. “Ouma drinks this stuff like it’s water,” he says. “Figured I’d see what the big deal is.”

The hand that had been between them stays firmly on the soda can even when Momota screws up his face in disgust after every sip. Maki’s face mirrors his every time her eyes dart to his hand. 

-

Hoshi’s stopped showing up to the breakfast meetings, Maki’s realized. She spends her mornings in isolation, honing her steps to make sure she is walking, not prowling, around the school to stave off boredom. The early morning hours when she’s left alone are when the strangest thoughts come to her. 

But she’s not alone today. Hoshi is outside the school, and he nods at her when she draws close. “Morning.”

Maki doesn’t return his greeting. She doesn’t have anything else to do, but she knows that she wants to avoid conversations with him. Hoshi says, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes.”

He gives her a long look. “You can ignore me if you want, but there are enough people here lying to my face already.”

“I’m not lying,” Maki says. “And I don’t have to answer you.”

Hoshi pauses, fiddling with a cigarette. “Alright.”

He starts to chew on it, and the fact that he doesn’t seem inclined to say anything more compels Maki to think of an answer. “I was going to the tunnel.”

Hoshi nods. “Makes sense. Maybe you could get through it without us slowing you down. And you don’t have to hold back now either.”

Maki doesn’t like his tone, and her eyes narrow. “Maybe I could.”

“Remember us when you escape then, alright?” Hoshi says. “Call the police for help or something if you feel like it.”

“If you’re holding a grudge against me because I won’t give you your video,” Maki says, “then knock it off. It’s annoying.”

Her eyes have darkened, but Hoshi only shrugs in response. “Sorry to be an inconvenience then.” Maki frowns and turns away from him, her hair snapping after her at the sharp turn. Hoshi says, “remember, get help for the rest of us.” 

Maki sighs. “You can think whatever you want about me, but I wouldn’t just leave like that.”

“It’s not a judgment or anything. Everyone wants to leave.”

Maki stares at him over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”

Her words finally unsettle Hoshi and he stares at her as if her hair had come alive. “Everyone wants to go home? What do you think it means?”

It’s only confusion and none of the subtle scorn that had laced his words before. His point is obvious, of course. There would be no game if there was no incentive to escape. Maki turns away again, eyes locked on the bars of their prison. “Nothing. I thought you said something else.”

She feels Hoshi’s eyes on her back, and Maki knows she should leave immediately, perhaps aimlessly dart through a few of the traps in the tunnels out of boredom to make her lie more real, but she stays rooted in place. Even when there’s no benefit, it’s always been hard for her to walk away from a challenge. Whatever monster boils just beneath her skin doesn’t allow her to. 

Hoshi says, “Don’t worry. It wasn’t anything important. But,” Maki hears him snap his candy cigarette in half, “starting to think there might be a murder soon.”

Maki knows she’s supposed to prod him further—ask him why or how he knows a thing like that—but she keeps her fists and jaw clenched tight. Hoshi sighs, answering the question she didn’t ask. “Just a feeling I have.”

“When you kill someone,” Maki says. “I’m going to tell everyone what you just said, and you’ll be executed.”

“That’s fine,” he says. “They won’t believe you, but even if they did, it’s still fine.”

Maki can’t help but face him at that. “You saw Akamatsu and Tojo’s executions. Maybe you don’t have a reason to live, but you don’t want to die like that.”

Hoshi’s eyes are dull. Maki remembers when Momota called him a zombie, and she doesn’t think she can disagree with the assessment. “I don’t care. I’m just tired of this game. Figure the sooner it’s done for me, the better.”

Maki starts to say, “If you’re trying to guilt me into showing you your video—”

“No. I wouldn’t make that mistake,” Hoshi says. “I doubt guilt gets you to do anything.” Maki’s eyes darken again, and he says, “hey now, I said I want the game to be over, but I’m not about to let you kill me—I’m not a selfish enough guy to put everyone else in danger like that. If you want out, use the tunnels.”

That’s the end of their conversation. Maki walks away and sits fuming in the boiler room. Normally she’d wait, thinking about how badly she doesn’t want the game to end and the bars protecting her from the outside world to be stripped away, until it’s time to find Momota. Instead, there’s an announcement calling everyone to the gym.

-

Amami, Akamatsu, Saihara, Tojo. Maki never bothers with the names of her own victims, but Momota assured her that she owed it to the dead to remember them. It’s just as well as Monokuma raises a little book and tells them that one of those people can rejoin them.

Momota goes a few shades paler at the declaration. Maki raises both her eyebrows and wonders who on earth is stupid enough to believe something like that when Angie snatches up the book. Maki has placed herself firmly on the far side of the group, Momota inadvertently shielding her, and had kept a wary eye on Hoshi on the other periphery of the gym. In the center, Angie and a few of the others gather together. 

Ouma clicks his tongue. “Angie-chan, it’s really not fair to make a club. If you don’t invite everyone, then you’re just a bully, and I’ll never forgive you.” 

“Oh, no, no, no,” Angie says. “Everyone is allowed to join!”

Angie throws her hands in the air and announces that herself and some of the other faces who frequent the school are now the student council. Maki says, “so it’s a cult,” before she can stop herself.

Angie giggles. “Don’t be silly, Maki! Angie just wants to help everyone find peace inside the school through Atua!”

From his earlier comment, Maki had assumed Ouma was just as dubious about whatever is happening in front of them as she had been. Instead his eyes gleam, “Oh, Angie-chan, why didn’t you say so earlier? If that’s all it is, then I definitely want in! Buuut only as long as I get to be vice president. No supreme leader worth their salt would completely defer to someone else. You understand, right?”

Ouma crosses the gym to stand firmly on Angie’s side. She says, “Hmm, Angie will have to ask Atua about that, but she is happy to have you, Kokichi!”

His enthusiastic expression becomes just a touch strained when Angie pulls him into a hug, and though he hides it well, Maki recognizes the stiffness in his movements of someone not partial to being touched. She’d have more sympathy if the memory of Momota reaching out a hand to ruffle his hair wasn’t still burning. She’d have sympathy if he wasn’t Ouma.

Angie talks as she cradles Ouma and continues even after he escapes from her grip. She says, “If we believe in Atua, then we will be able to live here in peace. If we accept our lives here, there will be no more killings, so Angie wants to live here with everyone! We will all be safe, and Atua will take care of us.”

“Hey!” Iruma barks. “What the hell are you saying? That we should just shut up and live here forever?”

“That’s right, that’s right!” Angie says. “Because Angie asked Atua, and he said trying to escape is what makes killings happen. So the outside world has nothing to do with us anymore, and we can live here with all our friends!”

Iruma doesn’t like that answer and yells obscenities. Maki’s eyes scan over Angie’s assembled members. Ouma’s regular, carefree smile is plastered over his face, though it’s obvious he’s tuned into the current conversation with rapt attention. The others—Kiibo, Gokuhara, Yumeno, and the plain girl whose name still escapes Maki—look dead in a different way than Hoshi had earlier. The only one who catches her eye is the last girl, the one who looks like her—Chabashira—and the way she looks increasingly uneasy with each repetition of belief and peace out of Angie’s mouth.

The observation fades away from importance when Maki casts her gaze up to Momota, his odd silence, and pale face. Iruma is still yelling in response to Angie’s chirps, and Maki calls out, “Momota?”

Her voice shakes him. “Uh—what? Oh, sorry, Maki. Um…” He rubs the back of his head before raising his voice. “Hey, are we done now?”

Iruma lets out one of her regular vulgarities. Angie asks him to join her council. Ouma says that he really should. Momota waves them all off, and exits the gym with shaky steps, Maki at his heels.

They walk in silence for too long, and Maki can’t help herself. “You have nothing to say about what just happened? Don’t you want to leave as soon as possible?”

Momota nods at her accusation. “Yeah, I do. I’m just… not feeling myself right now. Actually,” his hand goes to the back of his head again. “I don’t even know if I’m up for hanging out tonight—feeling kind of sick. My bad for letting you down.”

“You’re sick?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s just a cold,” Momota says. “Felt it pretty bad this morning, but I should be able to sleep it off or something. And when I wake up, Angie’ll probably forget all about whatever crap she was talking about, so it’s fine.”

Maki feels like it’s not fine for a lot of reasons, but she can’t follow Momota any further once he closes the door to his room. The door stays closed for the rest of the day and even into the night. She rings his doorbell the way he does hers when the nighttime announcement approaches, and Momota opens up long enough only to tell her he’s skipping dinner that night.

The isolation sets in again as Maki sits under the stars, tearing at the grass unlucky enough to be positioned under her anxious hands. She remembers what Angie said and throws a fistful of grass with all her strength. It’s still only grass and wavers about a foot from her before fluttering to the ground. 

Momota told her he wants more than anything to get out. Maki pulls her knees to her chest and tries to think of other reasons why she doesn’t agree with what Angie had said. Even if she wanted to fulfill the desire she knows she shouldn’t have, though, joining Angie’s group was out of the question. Ouma was there, which means they were already the enemy. 

Maki hears a laugh, then, “Hey, Angie-chan! Look, there is someone here!” and a large shadow looms over her. Gokuhara with his perpetually apologetic face is right behind her, and if it wasn’t for Ouma’s warning, Maki knows that she wouldn’t have been able to resist her instincts to lash out at him. Instead, she just jolts away and into a standing position. 

The entirety of the student council is right in front of her, and Maki barely hears whatever Angie says over her efforts to keep herself in check. “Ah, Maki! What are you doing—oooh, wait! Angie remembers! You left with Kaito before you heard the rules, right?”

Maki’s voice is quiet when she responds. “Rules?”

“Yup, yup!” Angie says. “In order to keep a safe environment here at the school, Angie instituted a few rules. One of the most important rules is no going out at night for non-student council members since that’s when Shuichi was killed. But you didn’t know, so Atua says it’s okay this time!”

“You’re,” Maki says. “Enforcing a curfew?”

“That’s right! But like Angie said, just remember next time,” she says. “Tenko, can you escort Maki to her room?”

Chabashira gives a curt nod of confirmation, and she approaches Maki but doesn’t touch her. Despite Angie’s smile, Maki is very aware that her words are orders, not questions. It’s another challenge, different from Hoshi’s, but the burning anger flashes through her all the same. Ouma’s smirking, daring her to lash out in another challenge. But Chabashira seems even more apologetic than Gokuhara. 

Maki doesn’t fight, and she’s in the midst of debating whether she won or lost that battle when Chabashira finally speaks when they reach her door. “Um, Tenko is sorry.”

“For what?”

Chabashira opens and closes her mouth a few times. She fiddles with her hands and her feet shift in place. Maki is about to snap at her for her fidgeting when she says, “For Angie-san,” and runs away.

Maki watches after her. Then she goes to Momota’s room to ring his doorbell a few more times and tell him about what just happened. He answers on the fifth ring and feigns interest in her story well enough. He’s distracted, and Maki pretends her chest doesn’t hurt and that she doesn’t smell blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now that my big project is finished, I hope to update this more regularly. Chapters of my other ongoing fic are likely to be longer, so I might update this twice in a row instead on some weeks, but, like with all updating promises haha, we'll see! Also fun fact, in Maki's date events in salmon mode, she'll ask you to explain the jokes to her in comedy movies if you try to watch one with her.


	4. Roar

Momota refuses to leave his room, and Maki finds their roles reversed as she rings the buzzer until he cracks the door open an inch. One night has passed, and what little Maki can see of his pale face tells her he failed in his promise to sleep it off. 

“You look terrible.”

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, and… I dunno if I really feel like eating right now.”

“You’re skipping breakfast?”

Momota rubs the back of his head. “Yeah. Promise I’ll eat enough when I’m better to make up for it, though.”

The door closes. Maki is alone. 

She never really had anywhere to go in the mornings, but the knowledge that she truly has nothing to do and no one waiting for her makes the situation hopeless somehow. Maki can’t help but think how she had been fine with being left alone when her talent had been revealed. It’s all changed to quickly, and that thought is the one that propels her away from Momota’s door.

This isn’t over yet, whatever strange thing that had come alive when Momota reached out to her. Maki storms into the dining hall and brushes off the way all the chatter goes quiet at her arrival.

Chabashira starts to say, “Harukawa-san?” at roughly the same time Ouma says, “Sorry, no killer girls allowed.”

Maki ignores both of them. “Momota is sick.”

“Oh?” Angie tilts her head. “Is that so? What do you want us to do about it, Maki?”

The question makes her falter. Maki falls back on what she always does when she isn’t sure what to say. She glares daggers that do nothing at Angie’s cheery smile. It’s still enough to affect Yumeno, shaking as she tugs at her hat. “E-Even if you make that scary face at us, w-we’re not afraid of you.”

It’s hard not to find Yumeno annoying at the best of times, but the pause gives Maki time to think. “I’m just delivering the message. He’s not coming to breakfast.”

Ouma clicks his tongue. “Listen, I know you’re not very smart, but you’re going to have to try a little harder than that if you wanna hide the time of your murder.” Maki snaps her glare to him. Ouma laughs. “Yup, that face definitely convinces me you didn’t hurt poor, gullible Momota-chan.”

Even if he was less hostile towards her, Maki thinks she would still hate Ouma. Something about his face, his lilting voice, the audacity of his existence gets under her skin and makes her vision turn red. She’s aware she’s had a few too many dreams about killing him, but Maki has few intentions to fix that problem. There’s no Momota around to scold her, and Maki snarls, “the only person here I’d kill is you.”

“The threats also make me believe your innocence,” Ouma says.

“Ooh, no, Maki,” Angie says. “Atua says we all need to get along so we can live here in peace. Fighting is prohibited!”

Iruma speaks for her. “I’m getting real fucking tired of this Atua asshole ordering me around.”

“Ah, Miu,” Angie spins towards her. “You were out late last night, weren’t you?”

“S-So what? I always go out at night!”

“Then it appears both Iruma-san and Harukawa-san need to be educated on the new rule system,” Shinguji says. “Angie-san has devised quite the fascinating social experiment for us in the name of protection. No nightly outings, no arguing, no more talk of the outside world. Personally, I am deeply interested to see what beauty might emerge from this development.”

“Well, if the bondage freak likes it, then that settles it,” Iruma says. “This whole thing is bullshit, and someone needs to teach bible thumper a fucking lesson!”

Gokuhara’s massive frame forms a shield between Iruma and Angie. “No, Iruma-san. Angie-san said no fighting.”

“Yup, yup, that’s right!” Angie chirps. “No arguing, no fighting, no violence, and no leaving!”

Iruma retreated the second Gokuhara approached her, and her voice is a shaky stammer. “L-Like h-hell am I just g-gonna stay here the rest of my life…”

A deep voice from the back of the dining hall alerts Maki that Hoshi had decided to join them. “Then what are you going to do?”

“H-Huh?” Iruma says. “Well, I’m not joining a fucking cult.”

“No,” Ouma says. “Hoshi-chan asked an interesting question. If you’re planning on leaving, then what are you going to do?”

The focus is on Iruma and her shaking form, and for that second, Maki is part of that unified group, judging the outsider who slipped up. Iruma quivers.

Kiibo says, “Iruma-san, you do not need to—”

“You know what?” she says, throwing her hands in the air. “Fuck all of you! A-As if I give a damn what any of you assholes and your shitty made up god think!”

Iruma storms out. Kiibo takes a step after her and stops in his tracks at Angie’s voice. “Kiibo, Atua says that Miu needs a second to cool off, but do not worry. As long as Atua guides us, all will be well.”

“And if Atua says it,” Yumeno says. “Then it must be true.”

“That’s right, that’s right!” Angie chants in praise. “Ah, Himiko, you’re such a great student council member!”

They all take a minute to pat themselves on the back and applaud their work in bullying Iruma into a corner. Maki lets her gaze flicker over each of them, and the situation before her comes into clear focus. She has no proof, but the idea hits her all at once and there’s no letting go. Somehow, this has to be the reason why Momota won’t leave his room. The only issue is that Maki has never had a problem that wasn’t solved by killing.

She doesn’t listen to their babble. “Anyway, I’ve said what I need to. I don’t care what you do with your student council. Just leave me out of it.”

“Okie-dokie!” Angie says. “But remember, Maki, Atua is always happy to take in those in need.”

“That’s right,” Yumeno says. “As long as we have Atua, we don’t need to worry about anything. Everything will be taken care of for us.”

“Ah, Yumeno-san,” Chabashira says. “There are, um—there are some things we should do ourselves. Y-You know for Atua.”

Yumeno doesn’t seem to like that response and juts out her lower lip. “I guess…”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Tenko,” Angie says. “Himiko is right. Atua will tell us what to do, so there is no need to waste time thinking about things like that.”

“That’s good,” Yumeno says. “It’s a good thing Atua’s such a nice god that he’ll think for us.”

Chabashira shifts from foot to foot but keeps her mouth shut. 

Maki rolls her eyes and lets the doors slam behind her. 

-

Maki doesn’t really know what the student council does, all things considered, but every mission requires gathering intelligence first. She discovers the path to the tunnel has been blocked off, and the conversation she tolerates with Shinguji reveals that apparently Angie’s lab is restricted to council members. 

“Other than that and the night time rule,” Shinguji says. “Angie-san has a strict policy against Flashback Lights, which is a bit troubling. After your departure, she destroyed one. It was quite dramatic.”

“I don’t care about that,” Maki says. “And I didn’t ask for your opinions either.”

Even with his mask, it’s not hard to read his emotions, and Maki’s comment seems to have pierced through his normal serene air. “How truly selfish of you. You engage another individual in conversation and refuse to entertain anything they say that is not relevant to you. How truly arrogant.”

“I don’t want to have a conversation with you,” Maki says. “I just want information.”

“And I have given all I know,” Shinguji says. “Which I suppose mean we are done here. However, I suppose I must thank you—you have made my opinion on your character very clear.”

Maki rolls her eyes as she leaves him behind. The fact that Shinguji doesn’t regularly whine, scream, or prattle on about childish nonsense makes him one of the more tolerable people in the academy, but there’s something about him Maki can’t stand. The way he looks at her reminds her of Ouma. For all his talk about observing humanity, Maki is garbage on the side of the road in his eyes. 

Hoshi proves himself impossible to find, and Maki knows better than to try and ring Momota’s doorbell again. With no one to go to, Maki turns back to the red doors of her lab. She takes a deep breath as she places her hand on the door. She doesn’t need to kill Angie—just threaten her into stopping. That should be enough. That should get Momota to leave his room.

“Ah, Harukawa-san,” a voice calls out. For some reason, Maki feels relieved at being caught. Chabashira hurries over to her, her strange twin tails whipping this way and that as she looks one way and then the other. She fidgets like she had the night before and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Please don’t tell the others, but Tenko needs to talk to you.”

Maki lets her eyes narrow. “I’m busy.”

“You—” Chabashira follows Maki’s gaze to her lab. “Ah! H-Harukawa-san, are you planning a murder?”

“No,” Maki says. “This killing game actually makes it impossible to kill.” 

Chabashira asks in a small voice, “were you planning to hurt Angie-san?”

Maki sees no reason to lie. “Yes. Eliminating her outright would be the easiest solution, but right now that’s not an option. You can tell her all of this if you want—maybe the threat will be enough to make her stop this nonsense.”

Chabashira bites her lip. “Tenko… isn’t going to do that, but she also doesn’t think you should hurt Angie-san. If you could hear the things Angie-san says at student council meetings, you’d know just how manipulative and controlling she is, but Tenko still doesn’t think she deserves to die.”

“Then what does she deserve?” 

“Tenko is still figuring that out,” she says. “And that’s why she needed to talk to you. Tenko doesn’t know who else to go to, and Tenko is getting really worried about Yumeno-san.”

“I don’t care about Yumeno,” Maki says. “From what I heard this morning, it sounds like she’s Angie’s biggest supporter.” Maki shrugs as she turns back to the door. She says, “She’s a lost cause,” and slips inside.

Chabashira follows after her. “N-No wait! No, she isn’t! Angie-san is a bad influence and is encouraging her to stop thinking for herself. That just means that Yumeno-san needs more help.”

Maki busies herself with looking over her array of weapons, trying to piece out what is intimidating and painful but unlikely to kill. “Did she ask for your help?”

“Well, no… but that’s just because—”

“Then you’re wasting your time,” Maki says. She unzips a black bag to discover a disassembled crossbow inside. The parts come together easily in her hands as Chabashira watches with nervous eyes. 

“Tenko is sorry, Harukawa-san,” she says. “But Tenko can’t agree with that. Yumeno-san has trouble expressing herself, and she lets people like Angie-san tell her what to do because it’s easier than deciding for herself. She’s getting lazier and lazier, and Tenko can’t abandon her when she needs help the most.”

Maki lets out a deep breath as she turns to fully take in Chabashira. She had never stood out to Maki. Loud, annoying, and apparently obsessed with someone else’s business. The fire in her eyes looks too much like Momota’s. That’s why Maki can’t let this go.

“I’m only going to say this once,” Maki says. “There are a lot of people out there in the world—thousands, millions—who are desperate for someone to reach out to them. Yumeno is happy to let her brain rot. You’ll both be better off if you find someone who actually wants to change.”

Chabashira gapes at her. Then her expression changes to one of understanding. “Tenko regrets that she didn’t try to help you, Harukawa-san, and she is also sorry that Momota-san is sick. But,” she shifts into a fighting pose. “Tenko also isn’t going to give up, and she isn’t going to let you hurt Angie-san either.”

Maki glances from her to the crossbow in her hands. She begins the slow, mechanical process of taking it apart. “Fine. Have it your way.”

That catches Chabashira off guard. “H-Haru—”

“You have one chance to deal with Angie,” Maki says. “And if you can’t, then I will.”

Chabashira calls after her as Maki stalks out of her lab. If she’s going to be alone, then Chabashira can be alone, too.

-

The school is quiet, and Maki spends the rest of the day trying to iron out how she’ll solve the cult problem when Chabashira fails. Maki knows her limits, and that means talking it out is impossible. Monokuma’s executions mean killing is impossible. It’s night when the dorms are empty, save Maki sitting with her knees pressed to her chest outside of Momota’s door, that one idea comes to her. Get someone else to kill Angie. Hoshi’s words come back to her. 

Maki shifts to tug at her hair. No, she couldn’t do something like that. Her eyes fall on the tiny portrait above Momota’s door. She knows she’d kill to get a friend back but the killing game makes everything more complicated. 

The door to the dorms creek open, and Hoshi’s familiar form comes shambling in. Maki stands at the noise and looks down over the upper level railing. There’s a streak of blood across his coat. Maki raises an eyebrow. Hoshi stares back at her, unmoved. 

“The student council didn’t see you?” Maki asks.

“No,” he says. “Doesn’t really matter if they did, anyway. Hey, do me a favor? Tell everyone in the morning. Wanna get one last night sleep before the trial.”

Anyone else would probably be horrified at his blasé attitude. Maki says, “Who was it?”

“Do you care? You’ll find out in the morning.” Hoshi’s eyes drift to exactly where she’s standing. “It wasn’t Momota.”

Maki scowls, letting her red eyes glow with anger. “You’re an asshole.”

“I just killed someone, but that’s what gets to you,” Hoshi sighs. “Well, I guess murder doesn’t mean much to either of us. Goodnight, Harukawa.”

Maki glares at where he was standing until she hears the soft click of his door closing. It’s the strangest Maki’s felt in a while. She feels absolutely nothing at hearing another person has died, and she can’t help but regret that. If a miracle happened and she got to stop being an assassin, she could stop killing, change every part of her life, and eek out normality. 

Anger, jealousy, and wanting had always been there under the surface even when she learned how to be numb. Maki doesn’t know how to get back feelings that are just gone.

It’s a busy night apparently. It’s only minutes after Hoshi’s arrival that there are more hurried steps rushing into the dorms. Maki recognizes Chabashira’s ridiculous ribbon and Ouma’s grating voice immediately. They’re both headed her way, too.

“Harukawa-san,” Chabashira says as they approach. “Is Momota-san in his room?”

“Where else would he be?” Maki snaps. “What do you want with him?”

“Geeze, someone’s possessive,” Ouma says. “And don’t worry. It’s nothing nefarious.”

“If it’s related to your cult—”

“Angie-san doesn’t know we’re here,” Chabashira says. “Or, um, actually she does, but she doesn’t know what we’re doing.” 

“Give away all our secrets, why don’t you?”

Maki’s eyes flicker between them. “Apparently you didn’t hear me the first time. What do you want with Momota?”

“Well, our situation has turned quiet dire, killer-chan,” Ouma says. “As Hoshi-chan and Shinguji-chan both very politely told me they were busy tonight, and Iruma-chan’s been compromised, we are reaching critical numbers of non-cult members.”

The blood on Hoshi’s coat comes back to her. “Iruma’s compromised?”

Ouma waves his hand dismissively. “She’s just planning a murder, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

Chabashira jumps to explain. “Ouma-san said that based on the way Iruma-san was acting this morning—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” he says. “Like I said, I’ll deal with it. Anyway, step aside, murder machine.”

His words cause Maki to make up her mind to do anything besides that. “Whatever stupid plan you have, leave Momota out of it.”

Ouma places his hands on his hips. “Momota-chan’s a big boy. He can make his own decisions.”

“Tenko doesn’t like this either,” Chabashira says. “Having to go to boys for help at all makes Tenko’s skin crawl, but Angie-san is planning to do the resurrection tomorrow. We don’t have time.”

Maki rolls her eyes. “The resurrection isn’t real.”

“It’s Monokuma’s motive,” Chabashira protests. “Whatever it is, it’s playing right into his hands.”

The door to Momota’s room clicks open and the arguing stops. “The fuck is everyone shouting for?” 

He looks exhausted but marginally better. The absence of the cold sweat and the sickly pale color he had been before lifts a burden that had been on Maki’s heart.

“Aw, did we wake poor Momota-chan up?” Ouma says. “I know you need your beauty sleep, but we need all the manpower we can get—ugly or not.”

Momota frowns. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Angie-san is intending on summoning Amami-san’s spirit tomorrow,” Chabashira says. Momota’s eyes grow huge at her words. “We need to—”

“Th-There are no such things as spirits!” he shouts. “Don’t make shit like that up!”

Chabashira’s face twists in disgust. “If you weren’t sick, Tenko would have thrown you for yelling at her.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have yelled if you didn’t so something as fucking stupid as talk about ghosts!”

Momota huffs, and it all clicks together for Maki. “Are you hiding in your room because you’re scared of ghosts?”

Momota freezes. “N-No! ‘Course not. The great Momota Kaito isn’t scared of anything.”

“Real convincing there, tough guy,” Ouma says. “Anywho, as your supreme leader, I order you to take all that nonsense and go scream it at Angie-chan tomorrow, ‘kay?”

“Don’t order him around,” Maki says. “Do your stupid plan yourself.”

“See, like I said—”

“And a rat can’t do anything by itself, I know. Too bad.”

“Given that I’m trying to help everyone, and your opinion doesn’t matter in the first place—”

“Do you want to die?”

“Thanks for proving my point, killer-chan.”

Maki’s gaze burns, and she has a clear image of just how satisfying it would be to throw Ouma over the railing. “Maki,” Momota says. “It’s fine. Just ‘cause I’m a little sick doesn’t mean I can stay on the sidelines.”

“That’s not what I was—”

“So this is about whatever crap Angie was talking about the other day, right?”

They plan around her. Momota throws her a quick, “What do you think, Maki?” when she starts to blend in with the wall.

It’s not enough.

-

Maki shows up to breakfast with the group the next day to kickoff whatever haphazard grandstand they came up with. She had stopped paying attention and busied herself with boring holes into Momota’s back. And it’s fine because she knows their plan will never come to fruition. 

Kiibo says, “Excuse me, has anyone seen Iruma-san?”

There’s a general murmur, and Maki glances towards Hoshi staring blandly at the table. Kiibo hurries off to go look for her. Maki taps her fingers on her arm counting down the seconds until he comes back to start the investigation. 

Momota clears his throat. “Hey, Angie—”

Maki tugs at his arm. “Wait.”

“For what?”

She looks away, but Momota says, “Nothing,” when Angie asks what he wants.

Everyone hears Kiibo’s frantic steps before he bursts back into the dining hall. “E-Everyone! Th-There’s—in Iruma-san’s lab, she—she—please come with me!”

Angie leads the way to Iruma’s corpse. She looks a bit like Amami had—collapsed on her side, her long tangled hair obscuring the wound that smashed the back of her skull in. 

The body announcement plays, and Angie wastes no time swooping in. “In trying times like these, we must look to Atua for guidance. With his help, we will have no trouble finding Miu’s killer, and then we can truly live in peace. This is only one challenge we must overcome to prove our worthiness.”

Another vulture. “If you’d allow my assistance, Angie-san,” Shinguji says. “With access to my lab, I believe I have the necessary tools to hold a séance. If we follow the procedures correctly, Iruma-san’s spirit can tell us what happened, and there will be no need to investigate at all.”

“No investigation?” Yumeno says. “That sounds pretty nice. Angie, can Atua help us do that?”

“Hmm, hmm, let’s see,” Angie says. “Ah, yes! Atua has spoken—he will lend his power to aid us.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Shinguji says. 

“And I will guard the body, captain Angie-chan,” Ouma says. “Just in case Iruma-chan’s ghost tries to come back for it.”

Maki rolls her eyes. Momota says, “Sh-Shut up!”

Angie, Yumeno, Gokuhara, and Kiibo follow Shinguji like ducklings back up to the school.

Ouma shoos Shirogane from the room with little protest, leaving behind the nonbelievers. “Alright, while they all hold hands and sing songs—”

“Is it really okay that we let them leave?” Chabashira says. “Tenko has a bad feeling about letting Yumeno-san—”

“She’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions,” Ouma says. “Well, actually she can’t, but no one really cares about that. Now to solve a murder!”

“Alright,” Momota says. “You figured out what happened to Shuichi last time, so I’m gonna be your partner.”

Maki’s lips curve into a deep scowl. Ouma says, “Oh? Do you want to be my bumbling sidekick?” 

“What? No! You’re my—”

It’s hard to listen. Maki takes inventory of the room. Herself, Momota, Ouma, Chabashira, and Iruma’s corpse. Hoshi slipped away at some point. Maki goes after him.

He’s not hard to find, sitting in the grass and staring up at the sky. Maki lets her shadow loom over him. “You’re going to be even more suspicious if you don’t investigate.”

Hoshi takes a long drag on his cigarette. “That’s the idea.”

“So you’re planning to just confess.”

“No,” he says. “I’m gonna lie first. Tell everyone I caught the taste of blood again, or that Iruma pissed me off. Something like that.” He sighs. “Figured it’s the voting for someone part that kills in this game. Least I can do is make that easier for everyone.”

Maki sits down beside him, and Hoshi watches her movements with renewed interest. “You’re too late,” she says. “Ouma already told everyone that Iruma was planning murder last night.”

Hoshi pauses. “Well, fuck.”

They sit quietly. The clouds in the cage have always been nice even though they always move and shift in the same patterns. Maki says, “What are you going to do now?”

“Don’t know,” he says. “Probably still try. The least I can do with my life now.” He gestures to her with the cigarette. “You should get out of here. It’ll make you look bad for you if we’re seen together.”

Maki shrugs. “I don’t care. I always look bad.”

“That’s not what you thought before.”

“No,” she tugs at her hair. “Things are different now. Some people will believe in me and some people won’t, and there’s nothing I can do that will change that.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Do you really think that Iruma deserved to die?”

Hoshi studies her carefully for a long moment. “No, but I’ve solved all my problems by killing up until now. You’re probably the only person here who understands that.”

Maki does. It’s almost painful how much she does. “Then say that at the trial. None of the others will get it, and they’ll vote for you.”

“True, but…” his eyes cast over Maki, searching her face for whatever he wants to say.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Maki snaps. “You have an hour left to live. There’s no point in beating around the bush.”

“Good point,” Hoshi says. “Was just thinking if you were going to be okay. Like you said, people who grew up happy aren’t going to understand you, even… someone who tries really, really hard.”

Maki rolls her eyes. “If you’re talking about Momota, just say it. And it’s not like I’m expecting him to get it—he just reminds me of someone I used to know.”

“That’s even worse.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Hoshi shrugs. “Nothing. Just words of a dead man walking.”

“Whatever,” Maki sighs. “And since you are going to die, why are you worrying about me?”

“Dunno. Guess,” he fiddles with his cigarette, letting the plumes of smoke shift this way and that. “You were probably the closest I came to making a friend here.”

Maki looks away. She doesn’t really know what to say to that. “I’m not a very good friend.”

“No, you’re not,” Hoshi says. “But I’m not a very good person.”

Maki opens her mouth. The Monokuma announcement says, “A body has been discovered! Everyone please make your way to the fourth floor.”

They both stare up at nothing. Hoshi says, “fuck.”

Maki and Hoshi get there before the group at Iruma’s lab. Yumeno’s tiny body is in the center of a strange looking salt circle, blood pooling out of her neck. Gokuhara is beside himself. “H-How could this happen? Yumeno-san—Gonta is so sorry he didn’t protect you!”

Shinguji just murmurs, “Impossible… why didn’t the séance work?”

Hoshi’s mouth is pressed into a thin line. 

Chabashira slams open the door and lets out a strangled cry. She’s even worse than Gokuhara in her sobbing as she rushes over to cradle Yumeno’s broken form. Ouma and Momota are only a few paces behind her, and Momota shouts, “What the fuck happened?”

His question is answered by Shinguji hissing, “Chabashira-san, don’t! If you disrupt the magic circle, you will curse us all!”

Momota goes pale. “C-Curse? Th-There’s no such thing as—”

Apparently Shirogane appeared at some point. “Oh no! Will Iruma-san’s ghost get angry at us? O-Or is she already a vengeful spirit since she killed poor Yumeno-san?”

It’s too much for Momota, and he clings to Maki. “No, no, no, shut up!”

Maki feels her entire face go red, and she shoves him off of her with a heated, “Do you want to die!?”

He scuttles back a few steps with a whimper that only gets worse when Gokuhara says, “But why? Why would Iruma-san’s spirit hurt someone?”

“I don’t know,” Shirogane says. “But she’s definitely here—there’s no other explanation.”

Shinguji hums. “Iruma-san was temperamental. I cannot rule out that being the case.”

With Maki’s rejection, Momota grabs Ouma’s shoulders instead, leaning down to press his forehead between his shoulder blades. Ouma just giggles at the contact. Maki feels a new heat and a painful, embarrassed desire to tell him she changed her mind and that he can hold her instead. 

Ouma keeps laughing when Momota halfheartedly tells him to shut up. Momota doesn’t spare her another glance as they exit the room together. Maki knows Hoshi’s eyes are on her, but that does nothing to help the fire licking up the insides of her chest.

Angie places a comforting hand on Chabashira’s shoulder, the other brandishing the little black book. “Don’t cry, Tenko,” she says sweetly. “Atua says we can use the resurrection ritual to bring Himiko back!”

Maki doesn’t think. She shoves Angie and rips the book from her hands, sending her stumbling back and onto the floor. “Your god isn’t real,” Maki says. The pages from the book tear easier than the grass in the school grounds and they flutter just as well with each handful Maki shreds. “Believing is pointless. Quit playing pretend and grow up.”

The pages scatter to the ground, a few landing in the shining pool of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably tell from this chapter, the mystery solving isn't really a big part of this fic, but the important parts (a certain two person rule) will definitely come up ; )


	5. Waver

Maki didn’t look back when she stormed out of the crime scene.

Gokuhara and Kiibo’s horrified faces as she passed were enough to tell her exactly how well received her actions were. But it’s fine. Momota wasn’t there, and even if he was, he doesn’t like Angie, either. She pretends she doesn’t see Hoshi or hear Chabashira’s sobs. 

She waits at the fountain until everyone is ready, and only a third body announcement could make her move. 

Ouma signals everyone’s arrival by calling out to her. “Hey, Harukawa-chan, you missed all the fun.”

“Oh, Kokichi did you already forget?” Angie says, bright as ever. “We’re not talking to Maki anymore.”

“Oopse, sorry,” he says, still smiling. “I just got so excited about how cool Hoshi-chan was during the investigation that I wasn’t thinking.”

There are quite a few things in the short exchange that Maki feels she should question, but she keeps her eyes down and wonders why she keeps making decisions she can’t run from the consequences of. The bars of their cage keep her safe from the outside world, but they also keep her walled in with every bridge she burns. 

Momota’s shadow touches the tops of her shoes. “Hey, you okay?”

“Kaito!” Angie calls. “We’re not—”

He turns his head. “I’m not part of your shitty cult.” 

“You still shouldn’t—”

“So what’s wrong?” Momota says back to Maki. “Other than… the obvious. If shit’s getting to you, you know you can talk to me.”

Maki realizes he isn’t even aware what he’s doing. She can get so angry at him that she sees red, and then he lowers his voice to something soft and comforting. He’s suddenly talking only to her, and Maki can feel like maybe she is special and it was all in her head, and she lashed out and made everyone hate her even more for no reason. 

She tilts her head to the newly arrived elevator. “Later.”

He follows her gaze with a grim expression. “Right.”

“And it’s fine,” Maki says. “I was just… it’s stupid.”

Momota frowns. “If it made you upset, it’s not stupid.”

“No, it is.”

He wants to press her, but Maki’s already turned away from him. There’s a vengeful part of her, too. One that wants him to feel the same way she did when she sat outside his door with nothing to do for hours but pull at her hair.

She stands at the back of the elevator. He stays at the front.

As soon as they get the go to start the class trial, Hoshi speaks up at her side. “Monokuma told us that if there’s two different culprits, we only need to find whoever acted first, but,” he tugs his hat down. “I say we work on solving Yumeno’s case, first. If we have to live with a murderer after this, then we can’t let them hide.”

“Ooh vengeful, I like it,” Ouma says. “I didn’t know you and Yumeno-chan were friends.”

Hoshi gives him a withering look. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Well, I think it is a little,” Ouma says. “After all, you took charge so fast after Yumeno-chan died, I thought there had to be some reason. Figured a crush was as good as any.”

“You’re wrong,” Hoshi says. “So shut up.”

“See? Feisty!” Ouma says. “I’m telling you, there was something between them.”

“Kokichi, shush,” Angie says. “Atua is trying to speak, and he says… he agrees with Ryoma! In order to honor her sacrifice, we should bring Himiko’s killer to justice.”

“Tenko would also like to talk about Yumeno-san’s death…” Chabashira says quietly. 

Alibis are handed out. Chabashira, Momota, and Ouma. Maki and Hoshi. Shirogane brings up ghosts, and Angie shoots it down with a pointed smile at Maki.

Ouma had been at the helm last trial, but this time Angie doesn’t hesitate to push him out of whatever spotlight he thought he owned. “Now that we’ve covered alibis, Atua has delivered the answer,” Angie says. “The only person not on the student council without an alibi is Korekiyo, so he must be the culprit.”

“I know you wanna believe in your little cult or whatever,” Momota says. “But that’s not really evidence that—”

“No, it is the truth,” Angie says. “The student council is dedicated to ensuring our peaceful existence. It is impossible for a member to commit murder, and especially impossible for them to kill another member. That is Atua’s decree.”

Maki can’t help but take interest in whatever reaction is about to come. Either Angie’s followers will speak up against her and actually try to figure out what happened to save themselves, or they’ll risk death.

Gokuhara and Shirogane remain rooted in place. It’s a bit sad the robot has the most self preservation out of the three of them. “I do think that is true,” Kiibo says. “However, perhaps it would be wise to also hear the findings from the investigation as well as Shinguji-kun’s rebuttal.”

“Hmm?” Angie asks. “But why? Atua already gave us the answer. Do you doubt him?”

“N-No,” Kiibo says. “I… I just don’t think we can rule out a potential traitor in the student council so easily. Someone may have joined for the explicit purpose of using the rest of the council to defend them after they committed their crime.”

“Then who do you doubt Kiibo?” Angie asks. “If you think that’s true, then who do you suspect? Atua is very curious to know.”

If they were allowed to leave, Maki thinks there might have been a Kiibo shaped hole in the wall from how fast he started to backtrack. “Um,” he says. “W-Well, I’m not sure if I can just name someone right now. We haven’t even gone over the evidence or—”

“But you just said it could be a student council member, and the only ones without alibis are Angie, Gonta, and Tsumugi,” Angie says. “So which one of us do you suspect?”

“Like—like I said, I think if we go over the evidence first, then—”

“Oh come on, Kiiboy,” Ouma says. “Don’t back out now. Besides if you accuse someone, we can look at the evidence and prove them innocent. You’d be doing them a favor.”

Even with his lack of social skills, Maki can tell that Kiibo is very aware that no one would be grateful to be accused of murder. He starts to stammer, but Angie wastes no time in pouncing on him now that Ouma’s backing her up. “Yes, yes, if you have doubts Atua would like to hear them,” she says. “Tell us who in the student council you don’t trust.”

Maki’s actually starting to feel sorry for him when Momota comes to his defense. “Would you guys fucking knock it off?” he says. “Kiibo’s just saying we should go over the evidence instead of jumping to conclusions. How the fuck can anyone have a problem with that? Besides, he believes in you guys, but he probably wants to believe in Shinguji, too.”

“If that is the case,” Shinguji says. “Then I must say I am touched. I had no idea Kiibo-kun held any affections for me.”

“Ooh, Kiiboy has a crush on Shinguji-chan!”

“I-I do not!”

“I can’t believe how fast you’re rebounding after the pig.”

Momota slams his hands on his podium. “That’s not what I meant, and Ouma shut up.”

“Meanie.”

“None of us want to suspect anyone,” Momota says. “I’m not happy when I have to doubt someone, but when I do that just means I have to try and believe in them even harder.”

“That…” Hoshi says. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“Not everyone you meet is always gonna be honest with you—”

“Like me!” Ouma volunteers.

“—and while everyone has secrets, when you think someone is hiding something malicious, you gotta face that doubt head on.”

Maki has no idea what that’s supposed to mean or how they’re supposed to go about doing that. Apparently she’s not the only one. “I am not sure I follow,” Kiibo says. “But I agree that if there are doubts, we must confront them.”

Angie hums. “Okay, Atua has delivered his answer. Everyone can be investigated, but he still directed Angie towards trustworthy members. Atua will accept this test of faith and be proven correct in the end.”

“Ooh, looks like you’re facing an uphill battle Shinguji-chan,” Ouma says.

“It would seem so,” he says. “However, I am confident that Kiibo-kun is correct. After a proper examination of the evidence, everything will come to light.”

Hoshi leads said examination with a determination he’s never showed about anything. Maki watches him in silence. She has no idea who Yumeno’s killer is, and she doesn’t think she should get in the way of his efforts to solve whatever crime he must think is his fault. No dead Iruma, no séance, no killer who will get off scot-free while Hoshi gets punished for his crimes. 

Maybe he’ll hang or get beaten to death. Maki doesn’t know. She supposes it doesn’t matter. There isn’t much point in picking apart the inevitable. But he can control whether the second killer gets away, and he takes the lead of their poor sinking ship with both hands. With Hoshi’s death, they’ll only need to throw seven more people overboard. It’s too easy to look over everyone and imagine what’ll be the death of them. Maki looks back to Hoshi and focuses on the inevitable. 

“With all that being said,” he finishes. “We can say for sure that Yumeno’s death was planned far in advance. The killer definitely knew about the séance beforehand.”

“So then Yumeno-chan and Iruma-chan were killed by the same person,” Ouma says. “Right, Hoshi-chan?”

There’s no doubt in Maki’s mind that Ouma already knows and is just letting him squirm. “No,” Maki says. “That isn’t necessarily true.”

Ouma smiles at her. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“No, Maki’s got a point,” Momota says. “With the weird cult shit, anyone could tell a murder was gonna happen. Yumeno’s killer probably was just bidding their time until someone else acted.”

“That can’t be true,” Chabashira says. “Because they can’t escape after there’s already been a murder, and that would mean they killed Yumeno-san… just because they could.”

Hoshi lets out a sigh. “Maybe they knew about the rule beforehand or maybe they didn’t. Either way what happened to Yumeno… this isn’t a forgivable crime.”

Chabashira starts to agree, and Maki says under her breath, “Are any murders forgivable?”

“No,” Hoshi responds. 

The mechanics are worked out. The entire thing sounds bafflingly stupid to Maki, and she starts to think leaving the crime scene was the right decision. 

“Then the one who picked the room must be the culprit,” Shinguji says. “And that was Angie-san.”

“Nope, that’s wrong!” Angie says. “Angie is innocent, and Atua is the witness.”

Maki can’t help but think things would be a lot easier if Angie was the culprit. She might not be dead, but she be distrusted and every problem would work itself out. 

Momota says, “but the other rooms were trapped, too.”

“Were they?” Shinguji asks. 

“Yeah, Ouma wanted to check ‘em out, and he almost brained himself when he stepped on a loose floorboard.”

“But Momota-chan was there to catch me and sweep me off my feet.”

“Shut up,” Momota says. “Anyway, the point is all three rooms had the weird seesaw trap in them.”

“The killer probably went through the trouble of setting up multiple traps so they could frame whoever picked the room,” Ouma says. “And since Angie-chan wouldn’t frame herself, Shirogane-san can’t see in the dark, and Gonta and Kiiboy are too dumb to commit murder, that just leaves Shinguji-chan.”

“That does sound right,” Gokuhara agrees, not seeming to pay any attention to the insult. “Shinguji-kun, did you hurt Yumeno-san?”

Shinguji doesn’t seem disturbed by the accusation. “It’s an interesting theory, certainly, but it’s not why we’re here. If you’ll recall, the case that matters is Iru—”

“Blah blah blah, Hoshi-chan murdered Iruma-chan,” Ouma says. “We already know that.”

The room predictably explodes, though it’s expected this time. Hoshi didn’t try to hide his crime, and he lets the accusations pile up around him with no resistance. Ouma’s busy picking at his fingernails when he finishes his explanation with a cavalier, “so basically Hoshi-chan picked Iruma-chan because she was planning to murder someone else. Any questions?”

Kiibo raises his hand. “Wait, how did—”

“Alright, if no one has anything to say, then I think we’re done here,” Ouma says. “Hoshi-chan is our culprit and Shinguji-chan killed Yumeno-chan for no reason.”

Chabashira says, “no reason?”

Angie raises her hands over her head in prayer. “And Atua’s guidance has proven to be true. The student council is innocent, and he led Angie to the culprit immediately.”

“It was still good we discussed it in full,” Kiibo says. “But I… I apologize for doubting you.”

“Dude, you don’t have to apologize when you didn’t do anything wrong,” Momota says. “If you do that—”

“Atua accepts!” Angie announces. “Congratulations everyone, we solved this case, and it’s all thanks to Atua’s blessing.”

Hoshi stares at the ground. Between Angie and Ouma, there was no space for him to say a word. Only a few podiums away, Maki can see Shinguji looking rather smug about the whole thing while the others pat themselves on the back for a job well done.

Maki thinks she’s the last person to pass judgments on right and wrong, but this doesn’t feel like justice to her. “Are you really satisfied with that?” she asks. “You don’t want to know why anything happened?”

Ouma clicks his tongue. “I already explained Hoshi-chan’s motive. If you’re going to be useless and daydream, at least keep your mouth shut when you come back to reality, okay killer?”

Maki scowls. “I meant let them speak for themselves, asshole.”

“Why should we?” Ouma asks. “At this point what are they going to do other than try and weasel out of it? And personally, I’d rather get on with my life than listen to a murderer try to make me feel sorry for them.” 

“That’s not the point—”

“You know who I actually feel sorry for?” Ouma says. “Yumeno-chan and Iruma-chan. You know? The victims?”

Maki opens her mouth to bite back again, when Hoshi says, “it’s fine. He’s right. You shouldn’t waste anymore time on me. It doesn’t matter what Iruma was planning—I had no right to decide if she should live or die. I’ve been on my way out for a long time now, and I decided to take someone else out with me just because I could. That’s… That’s it. That’s all there is to this case.”

Hoshi tugs his hat down. Momota says, “geeze man, what’s with you? You sound like you’ve known all that for a long time. Why the hell did would you do something when you already know it’s just gonna fuck over everyone, including you? What kinda motive is that?”

Hoshi eyes with for a long moment. “If you’re asking why people hurt themselves, then you’re not going to understand. There are some people who reach a place where they only know how to do bad things anymore. So that’s what they do.”

His words resonate with Maki to an unsettling degree. She hasn’t killed since their imprisonment, but she hasn’t done anything good. She’s just existed. Staving off a few impulses to destroy doesn’t mean she’s good.

“Then I guess Ouma was right,” Momota says. “If that’s how you feel, then there’s no point in listening to this. I’m not gonna feel sorry for you if that’s what you really think.”

“I never asked you to,” Hoshi says with a shrug.

Maki stares at the floor.

“Atua has passed his judgment,” Angie says. “This case is over.”

“Wait!” Chabashira shouts. “What about Yumeno-san? We still don’t… we still don’t know why she had to die…”

“I was aware of Monokuma’s rule,” Shinguji says. “I had no ill will towards her, if that’s what concerns you. I wanted to escape, so I killed when I saw an opportunity. Simple as that.”

“No,” Momota says. “There’s something wrong here.”

Shinguji raises his hand to his mouth in amusement. “Oh? Whatever do you mean?”

“Hoshi’s fucked up, but at least he’s showing remorse,” Momota says. “You… I don’t know what the fuck you are. You’re acting like this whole thing is a joke to you.”

“I assure you I am taking this very seriously,” Shinguji says. “And I am deeply sorry that Yumeno-san died in vain.”

“What Momota-chan is talking about,” Ouma says, “is that little rush you get when you get away with a lie. I personally am very familiar with it, and I think everyone here can tell that Shinguji-chan is riding that high right now.”

“Oh my,” Shinguji says. “Assuming you know what someone else is thinking—that’s awfully bold of you.”

“Thank you,” Ouma beams. “I’m a bold person.”

Chabashira shakes her head. “Stop it! Stop playing these stupid games and admit to your crime! You killed Yumeno-san, and you don’t even care! You’re not just a common male criminal—you’re a monster!”

“Another bold assumption,” Shinguji says, chuckling to himself. “Though I do admire that spirit. Yes, you are certainly an admirable girl.” 

Maki hadn’t thought much about Shinguji other than he certainly had the looks of someone who could kill, but the change in his tone makes her skin crawl and she can’t help but speak out on behalf of Chabashira. “Excuse me? What the hell does that mean?”

Shinguji doesn’t seem to appreciate her interruption, and his twinkling eyes harden when they cast over her. “Harukawa-san, I was not speaking to you. Please do not interrupt me.”

“Tenko doesn’t think she wants you to speak to any girl!” Chabashira shouts.

“I’m gonna second that,” Momota says. 

“Tenko doesn’t need your protection,” Chabashira mutters under her breath.

Angie clasps her hands. “Atua says we should interrogate Korekiyo later. Gonta!” Gokuhara jumps when she points to him. “You have been chosen to watch over him. This is your divine mission.”

“G-Gonta will try his best!”

“If Korekiyo attempts to attack anyone else, you have permission to bop him on the head.”

“Uh… Gonta will try?”

Ouma drums his fingers on the front of his podium. “Well, if we’re done with that then why don’t we just vote now? Anything left to say Hoshi-chan?”

Hoshi keeps his eyes downcast. “Make sure you press the right button.”

Ouma smirks. “If you insist.”

They argued for so long, but the end feels too fast when it comes rushing up to her. Maki glances over to Hoshi to see he doesn’t waste any time voting for himself. She follows suit. She supposes she could have done some stupid empty gesture like voting for herself or Shinguji or even Ouma out of spite. As Maki steps off her platform she thinks she does like Hoshi, and she does hate herself. But she likes being alive more than she likes him. Pretending otherwise would be a lie.

It’s unanimous and correct and nothing is surprising. Momota asks one more time, “so you really have nothing to say for yourself?”

“You guys already know it all,” Hoshi says. “Thanks for putting up with me for so long, I guess.”

“Man,” Momota shakes his head. “You’re about to die. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I’ve been dead a long time.”

“No, you haven’t,” Momota says. “Maybe you fucked up in the past, but you had a second change, and you threw it away for no reason. I just don’t get it.”

Hoshi casts a weary eye over him. “Why do you care so much about what I do?”

“He knew you in middle school,” Ouma volunteers. “Momota-chan’s a fanboy.”

“No, I’m not, idiot,” Momota says. “I just don’t like seeing people give up on themselves. It pisses me off.”

“You’re not supposed to like it,” Hoshi says. “But that’s what happens sometimes.”

“I don’t believe that,” Momota says. “Sounds like you’re making excuses for yourself.”

Hoshi pauses for a moment. Then he repeats what he had said to Maki earlier on the grass. “It’s good you don’t understand. Means you’ve lived a normal life.”

Even though she had been listening to their conversation since the beginning, Maki still feels surprised when Momota sighs and turns away. “Whatever. If you’re not gonna even try and communicate, then there’s no point.”

“Guess there isn’t.”

Hoshi doesn’t have goodbyes to say or any more parting words. Tojo was a tool that got used up and thrown away. Hoshi’s what happens when they keep trying to exist, drifting aimlessly until they can’t drift anymore. 

He gives a nod to Maki and is beaten to death by Monokuma.

As soon as he’s gone, he’s forgotten. Shinguji takes center stage when Gokuhara grabs his arm firmly, apparently taking Angie’s divine mission to heart. 

“Himiko has gone to be with Atua now,” Angie says. “But to honor her, the student council will handle Korekiyo’s interrogation.”

The fact that the only people no longer in the student council are Maki and Momota doesn’t seem to matter to her. “Hey, wait,” Momota says. “I got some shit I wanna say to him. And, Maki, you feel the same, right?”

Maki hadn’t felt like honoring Tojo or Akamatsu after their brutal ends, but this feels wrong. 

“Hmm, no, Atua says Maki can’t come,” Angie says. 

Momota starts to argue. “Bullshit, it’s not fair to leave her out.”

“It is divine will—”

“It’s your will—”

Nothing sounds right. The world feels underwater and their words are static until Momota grabs Maki’s arm. “Maki, are you listening?” he asks, just enough concern in his voice to get her attention. “Don’t you have something you want to say to him?”

It’s a strange question after being told to shut up over and over all day. Maki looks at Shinguji, who still looks so pleased with himself. “Not really,” she says, and Momota’s face falls. “He’s not going to talk to us, so there’s no point. He’s a dangerous killer who feels no remorse. What else is there to know?”

Ouma giggles. “Takes one to know one, huh?”

Maki glares at him, and she hates how right he is. She looks back at Shinguji and the way his eyes roam over the girls even when Gokuhara could break his arm at any second. She stares at her shoes and shrugs. “He’s obviously killed before.”

Momota whips back to look at Shinguji in shock. “Is that true?”

“Perhaps,” he answers. “I think I’d prefer to answer questions in Angie-san’s interrogation. It sounds more formal.”

Momota’s hands ball up into fists. “This really is all a joke to you, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Shinguji says. “Though there are many different kinds of humor, it is generally understood that jokes need to be funny, and I do not find Yumeno-san’s passing funny.”

“‘Passing!?’” Chabashira bites out. “You murdered her!”

“The two are synonymous,” he says. “Are they not?”

Chabashira seems even more likely to strike at this point than Momota, and Angie places a placating hand on her arm. “Tenko,” she says, her voice heavy with warning. “Atua says we must live in peace, and another murder means another trial. Right now Gonta is handling Korekiyo, right Gonta?”

“Y-Yes!” Gokuhara snaps to attention. 

They ramble back and forth. Momota turns to Maki again. “Are you sure you don’t want to come? I’ll fight Angie for you if that’s what you’re worried about, and,” he rubs the back of his head. “Since you have experience with… you know, killing and stuff, there might be some shit you know to ask that we wouldn’t think of.”

Maki looks past him towards Shinguji, silently enjoying the chaos he’s created around himself. She doesn’t know what’s made him able to smile so easily after being caught red-handed, but Momota is right. She has by far a better chance of figuring it out then any of the others.

Hoshi’s dead, and with Angie’s orders, Momota is going to be kept far away from Shinguji and any plans he might have. Six more people need to be thrown overboard for the game to end.

“I don’t need to ask any questions to know that a life like his doesn’t matter,” Maki says. “Just let Angie do whatever she wants with him. There’s no point in getting involved.”

She walks away from the group. Momota calls after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say other than the very cool announcement that I am 11 kudos away from reaching 10,000 total across my fics! I've been writing for this fandom for quite a while now, but I'm still caught off guard by the support every time, haha. Thank you!


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